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Tri-City News Friday, August 24, 2012, A3
The business of human anatomy Health care professionals get hands on experience with human body, thanks to a Coquitlam company By Sarah Payne THE TRI-CITY NEWS
A unique business in Coquitlam — the first of its kind in Canada — is giving chiropractors, nurses, kinesiologists and massage therapists a chance to brush up on their anatomy. Located in a nondescript warehouse, Somatic Explorations (www.somaticexplorations.com) welcomes practising health care professionals to explore human anatomy, not in a textbook but on human bodies. It’s a fact owner Chris Hagey acknowledges will make many people squeamish but he’s also quick to defend the people who make his business possible. “Donors are few and far between because it takes a special kind of person to do this,” Hagey said in the lobby outside his lab. “I can’t do what I do without the generosity of the donors and the generosity of their families.” The classes — from a pro-section of a predissected cadaver or a week-long, full-cadaver dissection — allow those working in health care to get ongoing, hands-on anatomy education, which improves the care of thousands of patients and clients. A registered massage therapist, Hagey said the business developed out of a passion for studying human anatomy. “People should revisit anatomy,” he said. “Even if you think you remember anatomy from way back in the day, or if you learned it from a text book... a 2-D image isn’t a true representation of anatomy. There are always things missing.” While Hagey was a director at the West Coast College of Massage Therapy, students were able to take a week-long anatomy class at the University of Saskatchewan but it was pricey and it meant missing class. “That’s when thought, ‘Gee, maybe I should build my own lab. But can I?’”
THE SEARCH
That was in 2004, and what followed was years of research into what, if any, government regulations would cover such a business. “I did a lot of due diligence but there’s really no recipe for this kind of thing,” Hagey said. By 2007, Hagey was satisfied there were no laws precluding him from opening a lab, making the next big hurdle obtaining cadavers. In B.C. the provincial government handles the donation of organs but not whole bodies, so Hagey had to look south, where there are three non-profit body donor programs that aren’t attached to universities.
D. DEWITT PHOTO
Chris Hagey, owner of Somatic Explorations, in his Coquitlam lab, where health care practitioners including chiropractors and massage therapists can take hands-on human anatomy classes. (Before Somatic Explorations opened its doors, the only way to donate your body to science was to contact the University of British Columbia’s faculty of medicine directly.) Hagey was eventually accepted to the U.S. donor programs after a series of ethical and procedural reviews but, still, his work was far from over. “My biggest problem was getting insurance,” he said. His was the only private anatomy lab in all of Canada and insurance agents weren’t keen on a start-up for which they couldn’t find a way to quantify the risk. It was a Coquitlam insurance broker who took the time to develop an extensive information package on Hagey and his business and later found a Vancouver-based company to take Hagey as a client. And still, the work wasn’t done. For four months, Hagey was on a full-time mission searching for lab space and sorting out zoning issues (the lab falls under both funeral home and medical research regulations). “I’d gotten good at the spiel,” he recalled, chuckling a bit at the reactions of many landlords. “I’d let it hit the floor and before
they could say, ‘No,’ I’d launch into an explanation of what I wanted to do.” Door after door was closed, until one day, in the summer of 2008, a landlord didn’t immediately turn him away. “He said, ‘Wow, that’s weird. It’s cool, but it’s weird.’ I missed half of what he said on the tour because all I could think was, ‘I can’t believe this guy didn’t say, ‘No.’”
CLASS IS IN
Taking a Somatic workshop doesn’t mean walking straight into the lab. Hagey has participants spend time in the outer lobby, where he talks about lab protocol, safety measures and, yes, the fact that they’re about to work closely with a dead person. From there, the group moves into the secure lab, where they sit in an area off to the side, but within sight of the raised stainless steel boxes that contain the bodies. At this point, Hagey reminds participants of the tremendous gift the donors and their families have provided, and stresses that the gift has been generously offered so that others may benefit from their furthered education. When the class finally approaches the boxes and the tables are lifted to expose the
bodies — covered but for the part to be examined — some are calm, others nervous, many emotional. “There’s a quiet reverence, and it’s not unheard of to see a few tears, but there’s nothing wrong with tears in a lab,” Hagey said. “There’s nothing wrong with accepting the gift that’s been given.” “When I took the first course I wasn’t scared, I wasn’t icked out,” said Annu Kliem, a Surrey-based registered massage therapist who recently took two workshops at Somatic Explorations. “I think I was just nervous about seeing the human form opened up the way it was.” Kliem went into the class planning to soak up as much information as possible, and says the experience has already improved the way she treats her patients. “The course... helped me understand a greater palpation of organs and musculature, it helped me understand depth-wise, how to go deep, where to stop,” Kliem said. “It totally opens up another layer, it’s opening your eyes to an understanding of the human body.” see WORK STRANGE, STRANGE, page 4
Pushing a cart to help at-risk kids By Robert Mangelsdorf BLACK PRESS
BLACK PRESS PHOTO
Joe Roberts hopes to finish his Calagary-toVancouver training walk for Push for Change Saturday. Funds will go to support at-risk youth.
Joe Roberts is keeping his promise. More than 20 years ago, when Roberts was a homeless drug addict living in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, he made a promise to himself and to God to give back any way he could should he ever get clean. Now a successful Coquitlam business executive, he has been making good on that vow. For the past two months, Roberts has been pushing a custom-built shopping cart from Calgary to Vancouver in an effort to help bring an end to youth homelessness. Called The Push for Change, Roberts’ campaign hopes to raise funds for early intervention projects for at-risk kids attending alternative school programs or living in group and foster homes. He also hopes fund late intervention programs providing food and shelter for kids already on the streets.
“It can be something as simple as a blanket and a meal,” he says. “It’s about building trust, so when they want to make a change, we can get at them and help them.” Roberts shared his story at the Salvation Army’s Caring Place Ministry in downtown Maple Ridge last Friday morning as he pushed his cart through town. Having lived on the streets himself, Roberts can empathize with many of the shelters residents. Growing up in Midland, Ont., Roberts was a good kid, from a good home. “We weren’t rich, but we weren’t poor,” he says. “It was a typical middle class Canadian home, with a dad that went to work and a mom that stayed at home.” Life was good, until Roberts’ father died suddenly from a heart attack at age 35. Roberts was just eight years old. “He was the kind of dad who was always there, he coached the baseball team and the hockey team,” says Roberts. “And at eight, I
felt ripped off, because I lost my hero.” His mother was a housewife with no career or education, and few options to help support the family. Soon she moved herself and her three children in with a new boyfriend, capable of supporting the family. Who happened to be a violent alcoholic. The love and laughter and joy of their home was gone, replaced instead, with abuse and fear. “It was a dangerous place to be,” says Roberts. While his father had always supported and encouraged him, this new man in his life had nothing but contempt for the children he now had to support. “You’re stupid, you’ll never amount to anything, you’re a dummy,” he told Roberts. “That’s when the hairline fractures in my self-worth began to show,” Roberts says. “I felt like I didn’t know where to fit into the world.” see FORGIVENESS FORGIVENESS,, page 4